it?”
“Maggie’s in tears,” he says suddenly.
I sigh. “Is it about me?”
“Not everything’s about you, Bradley. Apparently she had some kind of fight with Peter. She sent me to find yo.Se’s in the girls’ room by the chemistry lab.”
“You don’t have to run errands for her.”
“I don’t care,” Walt says, as if the whole situation is pointless. “It’s easier than not doing it.”
Something is definitely wrong with Walt, I think, as I hurry away to meet Maggie. He’s always been slightly sarcastic and cynical, which is what I love about him. But he’s never been this world weary, as if everyday life has drained him of the strength to continue.
I open the door to the small lav in the old part of the school that hardly anyone uses because the mirror is mangy and all the fixtures are from about sixty years ago. The writing scratched into the stalls appears to be about sixty years old as well. My favorite is, For a good time, call Myrtle. I mean, when was the last time someone named their kid Myrtle?
“Who’s there?” Maggie calls out.
“It’s me.”
“Is anyone with you?”
“No.”
“Okay,” she says, and comes out of the stall, her face swollen and blotchy from crying.
“Jesus, Maggie,” I say as I hand her a paper towel.
She blows her nose and looks at me over the tissue. “I know you’re all caught up in Sebastian now, but I need your help.”
“Okay,” I say cautiously.
“Because I have to go to this doctor. And I can’t go alone.”
“Of course.” I smile, grateful that we seem to have made up. “When?”
“Now.”
“Now?”
“Unless you have something better to do.”
“I don’t. But why now, Maggie?” I ask with growing suspicion. “What kind of doctor?”
“You know,” she says, lowering her voice. “A doctor for…women’s stuff.”
“Like abortion?” I can’t help it. The word comes out in a loud gasp.
Maggie looks panicked. “Don’t even say it.”
“Are you—?”
“No,” she says, in a heated whisper. “But I thought I might be. But then I got my period on Monday.”
“So you did it…without protection?”
“You don’t exactly plan these things, you know,” Maggie says defensively. “And he’s always pulled out.”
“Oh, Maggie.” Even if I haven’t had actual sex, I know quite a bit about the theories behind it, the number one fact being that the pull-out method is known not to work. And Maggie should know this too. “Aren’t you on the pill?”
“Well, I’m trying to be.” She grimaces. “That’s why I have to go to this doctor in East Milton.”
East Milton is right next to our town, but it’s supposedly filled with crime, and nobody goes there. They don’t even go through it, under any circumstances. Honestly, I can’t believe there’s even a doctor’s office there. “How did you find this doctor anyway?”
“The Yellow Pages.” I can tell by the way she says it that she’s lying. “I called up and I got an appointment for twelve thirty today. And you have to go with me. You’re the only person I can trust. I mean, I can’t exactly go with Walt, can I?”
“Why can’t you go with Peter? He’s the person who’s responsible for all this, right?”
“He’s kind of pissed at me,” Maggie says. “When he found out I might be pregnant he freaked out and didn’t talk to me for twenty-four hours.”
There is something about this whole scenario that just isn’t making sense. “But, Maggie,” I counter, “when I saw you on Sunday afternoon, you said you’d had sex with Peter for the first time—”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I don’t remember.” She grabs a handful of toilet paper and puts it over her face.
“It wasn’t the first time, was it?” I say. She shakes her head. “You’d slept with him before.”
“That night after The Emerald,” she admits.
I nod slowly. I walk to the tiny window and look out. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, Carrie, I couldn’t,” she cries. “I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you, but I was scared. I mean, what if people found out? What if Walt found out? Everyone would think I was a slut.”
“I would never think you were a slut. I wouldn’t think you were a slut if you slept with a hundred men.”
This makes her giggle. “Do you think a woman can sleep with a hundred men?”
“I think she could, if she worked really, really hard at it. I mean, you’d have to sleep with a different guy every week. For two years. You practically wouldn’t have time for anything but sex.”
Maggie throws away the tissue and looks at herself in the mirror as she pats cold water on her face. “That sounds just like Peter. All he thinks about is sex.”
No kidding. Hell. Who knew nerdly old Peter was such a stud?
The doctor’s office should be fifteen minutes away, but thirty minutes have passed and we still can’t find it. So far we’ve nearly backed into two cars, driven over four curbs, and run over a handful of french fries. Maggie insisted we stop at McDonald’s on the way, and when we got our food into the car, she lurched out of the parking lot with so much force all my french fries flew out the window.
Enough! I want to scream. But I can’t do that—not when I’m trying to get one of my best friends to a crackpot doctor’s office to get a prescription for birth control pills. So when I look at my watch and see that it’s past twelve thirty, I gently suggest we stop at a gas station.
“Why?” Maggie asks.
“They have maps.”
“We don’t need a map.”
“What are you, a guy?” I open the glove compartment and look inside in despair. It’s empty. “Besides, we need cigarettes.”
“My
